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Yet Rosa couldn't find any objective evidence that it works or that these so-called energy fields even exist. To provide such proof, TT therapists would have to sit down for independent testing--something they haven't been eager to do, even though the magician-turned-debunker James Randi has offered more than $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate the existence of a human energy field. (He's had one taker so far. She failed.) A skeptic might conclude that TT practitioners are afraid to lay their beliefs on the line. But who could turn down an innocent fourth-grader? Says Emily: "I think they didn't take me very seriously because I'm a kid." Bad move, as it turned out.
The experiment was straightforward: 21 TT therapists stuck their hands, palms up, through a screen. Emily held her own hand over one of theirs--left or right, decided by the flip of a coin--and the practitioners had to say which hand it was. When the results were tallied, they'd done no better than they would have by simply guessing. If there was an energy field, they couldn't feel it. Emily is quick to point out that her test must be replicated before it's considered definitive. But it isn't good news for the TT community.
TT supporters, predictably, attacked the study. Says Dolores Krieger, professor emerita of nursing at New York University, who founded TT in 1972: "It's a cute idea, but it's not valid. The way her subjects sat is foreign to TT, and our hands are moving, not stationary. You don't just walk into a room and perform--it's a whole process."
That's a pretty weak defense. A stronger one is that many patients really do say they feel better after TT treatment. Emily's experiment shows that TT does not work the way its advocates claim. But what nobody has done--neither Emily nor the die-hard skeptics who were so quick to champion her findings--is try to understand why TT does anything at all. Maybe it's just a placebo effect. Maybe the simple fact that someone is hovering over you, paying attention to you, has therapeutic value. But, if so, that's not such a bad thing. And what harm would there be in learning how to do it better?